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Stress and burnout in the field

Hello my name is Leann and I am a 3rd year Child
and Youth Worker student and I will be graduating this April. I was just
wondering about what the burn out rate is in this field of work due to the
high stress level and high demand of of our job. I am also wondering about
how people in this field deal with this issue. I am looking for any
suggestions that will help assist me on my journey to being a CYW!!!

Thank you
Leann
...

Hi Leann; I don't have any stats to back me up here but I believe that the
burn out rate is fairly high in this field. I would strongly suggest when
you are going to interviews one of your questions should be how often you
receive supervision. Supervision is very important, and you'd be surprised
how many agencies do not offer their CYW's consistent supervision. The other
thing is make sure you have other ways to relieve stress in your own life, a
good group of supportive friends and never forget about you!! If we don't
take care of ourselves we cannot take care of the children, youth and
families we work with.
Amy
...

Well Leann, I believe that self care is a effective measure to help
someone's stress level in regards to their field. I am a third year student
and have part time jobs in the field and have troubles taking time to myself
so I have to remind myself that sometimes things that don't seem important
really are. Like taking a relaxing break from work and school might not be a
priority but maybe it can be very helpful to you and make you a better CYC.

Alex Aiello, Thunder bay, ON
...

From: Mary Murray
Hi Leanne, unfortunately burn-out is all too apparent in the field of social
care. Too few managers acknowledge the impact on staff following for example
assault or the continuous bombardment of anti-social/inappropriate behaviour
on them. I think it is a good idea to have included in weekly team meetings,
a time at the end when staff can be asked and say exactly how they are
feeling and managing/or not. Professional supervision can also be a life
saver. If this is not available in your service, ask that it be introduced
or find yourself a good supervisor outside of your service. Delano, F.
(2001) "If I could supervise my supervisor..." Journal of Child and Youth
Care. Vol.15 No.2, pp. 61-64 makes useful reading*; try also 'Professional
Supervision: Myths, Culture and Structure' (2004) Eileen O'Neill (RMA).
Eileen O'Neill herself assisted our department with the introduction of
professional supervision and it has been a wonderful asset to individuals
and to the team. Above all Leanne, take good care of yourself. Be aware of
and share your gifts and talents. In the areas which you may require support
and professional development, ask for this support, ask ask ask!!!! Good
luck in your career.

Leann,
I think it is wonderful that you are thinking about this as when I began,
there really wasn't much talk about this subject. I think it was thought of
as meaning you had a personal weakness. we may also have seen how our
co-workers who were struggling were thought of in the organization. The
motto may have been, "suck it up and get on with your work". Some things
have changed for the better and maybe some other things remain the same.
There are lots of good articles and books out there on the subject. That's
one thing i would do differently. I would have read about the subjects a lot
more. I also would have exercised more. I think I would have talked about it
more with significant people in my life as sometimes they see things that
you may not be tuned into. Stress happens and I don't really see it as bad.
What I see as bad is when you feel alone with it or when it starts to
overwhelm you. That can happen in any profession. I think there is a kind of
compassion fatigue that can set in on workers who really want to help others
and feel drained by the appparent lack of good outcomes or a shortage of
resources. I think you have to take care of yourself and protect time for
yourself.

Take care, Charlie Coleman
...

Quote: Too few managers acknowledge the impact on staff following for
example assault or the continuous bombardment of anti-social/inappropriate
behaviour on them.

I must as the following question. If you were to be
standing between a bear and her cub, what would an "Appropriate" reaction be
for that mother bear?

I also ask you again, using the actual field of work you
are in, as to what you think a human being's "approprote" response should
be? If they don't react, they are deemed as uncaring, and not bonded to the
child. If they do react, they are labelled as anti-social, and inapropriate.

Could you be burned out yourself at this moment?

John Dunn
...

Hi Leann,
I have to be honest, I have not read your original question, but in response
to the answers you have been given here, I have to say they are all 100%
correct.

I have just ended my 10 year career in a residential
setting because I did not concentrate on my own self care and ended up too
exhausted, too mentally drained and too bitter at the whole company to allow
myself to go in for shift one more time. After some down time, I have
decided that I can take what I have learned about myself, and apply it to
most of the people I have ever worked with. People that still remain in the
residential setting that are physically falling apart at the seams, but
don't even know it because they are too concerned about the program and the
kids and plans of care and ... so on. Even when they are told, 'you need to
take some time off, you need to see a doctor about your constant headaches
or back pain' etc etc, these people and I think a lot of child and youth
workers everywhere put that type of stuff to last priority and like me wait
until they are about to explode before they even notice.

So, like I said, I took my experience, applied it to
almost all the professionals I know and developed a business. Helper's Haven
has a mission to do three things:

To support and motivate our fellow professionals in
their complex careers to maintain fresh ideas and an energized approach to
working with children, youth, families and people with special needs.
To provide holistic support through professional development workshops,
support networks, team building experiences, self-preservation retreats as
well as unlimited access to a vast variety of printed resources to enhance
therapeutic repertoires and overall ‘Helper’ potentials.
To recognise and celebrate the labours of such professionals and their need
for nurturing, reflection and debriefing at regular and predictable
intervals.

So far we have professionals flooding our phone lines
wanting to know when, where and how they can access these services. I think
just that fact alone screams the answers you were looking for. Self care is
of utmost importance, but is almost always of last priority to most workers.
This needs to change or no one in this profession will make it past that "7
year" mark before they unfortunatley and predicatble completely burn out.

If I had one piece of advice for you and your fellow
classmates, find a support network and call/see them regularily for the rest
of your career/life. Don't take that extra shift every week, tell your boss
you need time for self care. Demand that you get supervision at the vary
least monthly and remember, you want to change the lives of the youth you
encounter, but never at the price of your own health.

I would agree wholeheartedly with Amy and the others. I would also add that
I've frequently had to take a step back and remind myself that it is
generally not the young people that I'm working with that trigger my stress.

The young people we are working with are generally doing
the best they can with what they've got to work with at the time. I also
remind myself that while I may not always like their behaviour I don't think
I've ever met a kid I didn't like.

Most of the time it's the adults around me that cause
the most grief. And most of those adults that cause the grief don't seem to
have developed enough insight to reflect on how they are feeling, thinking
or behaving. I was reminded recently at some training I attended on
debriefing following incidents that with the privilege of clinical judgement
comes the responsibility of reflective practice. It's that reflection on our
feelings, thoughts and behaviour and what we do with that stuff that counts
the most.

Gord White
...

Hi-I have been following the burnout discussion and I am interested in this
topic for several reasons. One is I am a student and have not entered the
CYC field yet, so I only have my (yes, naive), thoughts - to go on in terms
of burnout in this field. I highly value and cherish my self-care practices
and I know how critical it is to the health of my whole being. I speculate
that because of my strong value and positive experience of self-care in my
life, I will be able to maintain it when I do enter the field (of course it
wont look just like it does now!). I wonder if I would be more susceptible
to burnout if this practice was not a part of my life.

In the last two years of my school life (Human
Services), the importance of self-awareness and self-care has come up, and
I'm wondering if this is becoming more of a topic in classes because of the
high burn-out in the field, and if so, I wonder if there has been any recent
reduction as a result? I also wonder if there are more effective ways to
prepare/educate students entering this field? When I read comments like "the
7 year mark" and CYC workers leaving the field because of not taking care of
themselves, I wonder if something got lost along the way or if it is
inevitable for some to burn-out. From my readings, there are many reasons
and causes of burn out and I wonder how there can be so much emphasis on the
importance of - self-awareness/ care/supervision/
accountability/responsibility/support/presence - and yet still have such a
high burn-out rate.
Would love to hear feedback

Meghan Mcallister
...

I think one of the first signs of stress is when reminiscing takes priority
over current needs. We are all comforted by either being effective or
recalling when our work was effective. When I am so absorbed by my own
problems I am not caring for the youth in the manner they need it is a sign
to me to get over it and be useful. This seems to keep the candle from
burning out.

Dan Suminski "Remember to Breathe"
...

Below is an edited bit out an upcoming article I am working on:

I would argue that burnout has to do with our capacity
to continue to respond emotionally within an environment and society filled
with loss, despair, fear, loneliness and grief. Youth workers encounter
youth and families in struggle with a society that sometimes seems, at best
indifferent and at other times, intent on destroying those people that youth
work serves. I would argue that the work requires the ability to avoid
distancing oneself from the lived experiences of the children and youth that
one encounters. If you manage to avoid the impulse to seek distance from the
lives of the youth you serve, you are still faced with the fact that the
lives of youth workers themselves encounter similar conditions within their
own families and communities. This combination of your own experience and
the experience of those youth and families you serve can reach levels of
pain encountered within any given day that become at times unbearable. This
means we must find ways to manage the pain of the work. This is a complex
and difficult task, but unless we engage it seriously, it is almost
impossible to avoid becoming alienated from the actual encounter between two
people in community with one another.

Pain is complicated. It is an imminent force, which
means it cannot be changed from the outside. It has to be met on its own
terms and fully engaged in the actuality of its lived condition. That means
that one has to fully accept pain on its own terms without anaesthetic
(drinking, despair, drugs, rage, anger, cynicism, shame, guilt or
separation/denial).

Correspondingly, however, that doesn't mean indulging
pain or wallowing in pain by holding onto it. Pain, like all feeling, is not
a stationary or one dimensional static force. It is a force used to take
things apart, to dissasemble them and it only sustains itself within things
that won't come apart or reorganize themselves at its insistence--bodies,
systems etc. It can't be outrun without hugely damaging consequences.

Pain requires that one allow it to transform you. You
have to open your heart. The temptation in the work, of course, is to close
it off in order to protect it from any further assault. That interferes in
the development of any kind of actual collaboration between youth and
adults, because if you have you closed off your heart or even restricted it
then you can't feel and if you can't feel, you can't know the world in its
actual formation and destruction. You become senseless and your reality is
thoroughly ideological and unrelated to the material conditions of the world
in which you live. In my practice, burn out is avoided when we develop ways
of working that seriously engage youth and adults in political projects that
build communities of both youth and adults that can cope with and change the
social conditions that produce the pain. To do that we must become fearless
in the face of pain and suffering; we must become dangerous in our love.

Hans Skott Myhre
...

To previous contributors to this thread John and Laura,

I hope that All Child and Youth Worker have the
opportunity to read your e-mail. Your messages are so powerful. I work in a
school and I have 20 days per year, I try to use all of them. We need to
heal ourself in order to be able to help others!!!!

Carmen a.l
____________

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Republic of South
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